Concerned Citizens’ Coalition’s ‘Formal Citizens’ Complaint’ against City of Victoria. Urgent plea for Provincial Government Intervention to save democracy in British Columbia. Call for nullification of Victoria Byelection – Referendum, request for rescheduling of same to 2011, immediate implementation of 31+ Task Force-recommended reforms of Local Government Act regulations governing elections, byelections, referenda, etc. Open Letter to Premier Gordon Campbell, Attorney General Michael de Jong, Minister Stephanie Cadieux from David Burke and Gregory Hartnell, former Concerned Citizens’ Coalition Councillor Candidates

Dear Premier Campbell, Attorney General de Jong, and Minister Cadieux:

We are writing to you today as two Concerned Citizens to hereby lodge a

FORMAL CITIZENS’ COMPLAINT AGAINST THE CITY OF VICTORIA

Through this highly unusual direct plea for provincial government Intervention into the matter of the highly questionable Victoria Byelection-Referendum, just undertaken on Saturday, November 20, 2010, we hope that you will ultimately agree with us that the very serious abuses of this particular Victoria City Council prior to, and during the campaign leading up to the Nov. 20 vote have been extensive, well-documented, historically unprecedented, ethically questionable, legally debatable, and ultimately do not serve the public interest of informed active voter-taxpayer-citizens in the capital city, nor those of the rest of the municipalities in the province governed by the Local Government Act.

VICTORIA CONSERVATIONIST, CIVIC REFORM AND PRO-DEMOCRACY WEBSITES

FOR PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT REFERENCE

We first of all draw your attention to two very informative websites to consult, to supplement your study of the City of Victoria’s version of these recent events, those opposition sites being:

wwwfocusonline.ca … FOCUS magazine, published in Victoria by Leslie Campbell and David Broadland

Other versions of the recent history of controversy leading up to the November 20, 2010 vote are found at our own CCC blogsite: gregoryhartnell.wordpress.com.

APPRECIATION OF PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT’S DECISION

NOT TO SUPPORT THE CITY OF VICTORIA’S IRRESPONSIBLE PLAN

FOR REPLACEMENT OF THE JOHNSON STREET BRIDGE

We appreciate and must acknowledge with gratitude that the Provincial Government did not give any provincial public matching funds to the City of Victoria when that inept local government went begging to it, and we trust that the provincial Ministers concerned had very good fiscal and heritage conservation reasons to do so.

After all, the Province of British Columbia’s government is generally not opposed to supplementing federal stimulus funding in provincial centres when appropriate.

So, the Province’s prudent non-co-operation is duly noted and appreciated by the Concerned Citizens’ as the correct and most responsible one.

Once it became evident that the NDP Mayor of Victoria, Dean Fortin, had threatened to impose residential property tax hikes on Victorians of up to 16%, and even threatened to disregard a NO victory in the referendum, the dictatorial, fearmongering nature of his strangely anxious regime became evident.

USE OF PUBLIC FUNDS FOR ONE-SIDED CITY OF VICTORIA PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN,

DISGUISED AS SO-CALLED ‘PUBLIC INFORMATION’

The City of Victoria then disgracefully used public funds estimated to be between $50,000 – $150,000 to produce of one-sided barrage of VOTE YES propaganda for the borrowing proposed, a loan amortized over twenty years for the sum of $49,200,000, toward a new replacement bridge for the existing heritage bascule at Johnson Street, Pandora, Wharf and Store Streets.

City parking ticket machines were used to display propaganda, not information, telling Victorians to VOTE YES.

A huge high tech flashing electronic sign in front of the City of Victoria-owned arena urged Victoria voters to VOTE YES.

There were no public matching funds for the NO opposition.

ABUSES BY SAANICH RESIDENT CANDIDATES AND CITY OF VICTORIA DURING VOTING DAY

Abuses of the Local Government Act regulatons governing byelections and referenda were violated at two polling stations, as chronicled at this blogsite.

These violations included the two Saanich resident Councillor Candidates’ byelection propaganda left in the Craigflower Polling Station and City of Victoria VOTE YES propaganda left inside the Fairfield New Horizons’ Polling Station, both violations occuring during the voting hours.

TWO SAANICH RESIDENTS AND VICTORIA BYELECTION CANDIDATES

WERE NOT ALLOWED TO VOTE IN THE REFERENDUM

Marianne Alto and Barry Hobbis, the two Saanich resident Councillor Candidates, were not allowed to vote in the Victoria Referendum, but they were both nevertheless giving Victoria Byelection-Referendum voters and taxpayers advice on how to vote on the fate of the Johnson Street Bridge!

SAANICH RESIDENT, INTERLOPING NDP CANDIDATE MARIANNE ALTO

PRETENDED SHE WAS AN INDEPENDENT ‘BUSINESSPERSON’,

BUT HAD NO VALID SAANICH BUSINESS LICENCE,

NO BUSINESS PHONE NUMBER OR WEBPAGE AND

DIDN’T IDENTIFY HERSELF AS NDP ON THE BALLOT

Victoria Councillor Candidate (and Saanich resident) Marianne Alto, endorsed by about a half dozen top New Democratic Party officials, including Mayor Dean Fortin, Rob Fleming, MLA, Denise Savoie, MP, etc., pretended that she was an independent Saanich ‘businessperson’, but she was found to have no listed business telephone number, no business web address, and not to have paid a required $100.00 business licence fee to the municipality of Saanich.

The Saanich Director of Finances acknowledged publicly during the campaign that she owed Saanich the overdue business licence fee, and that she should pay for a municipal or intermunicipal licence, and had not done so.

The Victoria Byelection Candidate laughed when asked about the matter.

Scofflaw Candidates’ behaviour such as this is a disgrace and engenders disrespect for the whole democratic process.

Reform of relevant regulations should require such Candidates to attend to such matters as overdue municipal business licences or other outstanding government fees to be rectified within 3 days of official notification of the Candidate of the nondisclosed infraction, and failing that, facing Prohibition from further participation in the Byelection or Election Campaign.

Despite her well-known associations with the NDP and CUPE, no mention of the party affiliation was indicated on the ballot, and the Mayor called her an ‘independent’ after the November 20 vote.

A Candidate participating in a Local Government byelection or election should be required to indicate party affiliations on the ballot, or failing that, all local ‘farm team’ partisan political associations with connections to larger already existing Canadian national and provincial parties should be entirely banned from participation in Local Government Elections in this province.

One way or another, party affiliation, if any, is public interest information that must be required to be disclosed before the campaign even starts.

Accountability and transparency must be emphasized in disclosure of such vital public information in the public interest.

MARIANNE ALTO’S VERY POOR VOTER SUPPORT: ONLY 4529 VOTES

OR 7.08% OF VICTORIA’S ELIGIBLE VOTERS SUPPORT MS. ALTO

Only 4529, or 7.08% of Victoria’s total 63930 eligible municipal voters endorsed Marianne Alto, and yet she was declared the winner in a byelection with the vast majority of registered Victoria voters not endorsing her in any way in the Victoria Byelection.

The YES vote that Marianne Alto supported counted a total of 10020 votes out of a total of 63930 eligible voters, giving that cohort a meagre 15.67% share of the total registered Victoria voters.

And yet a majority of those same YES voters did not support Marianne Alto, as 5491 YES votes were effectively lost to her.

LARGEST MAJORITY OF ELIGIBLE VOTERS WERE ABSENTEES:

47,388 VICTORIA VOTERS WERE BOYCOTTERS: 74.05%

The most important figure to pay attention to in the Victoria referendum, however, is that 74.05% of the Victoria eligible voters absented themselves from polling, and therefor only 25.95% of eligible voters actually participated.

These absentee votes are claimed by the Mayor and City as supporters of his plan, but a counterbalancing claim by the NO would be equally ridiculous to acknowledge, and impossible to prove scientifically.

Therefor, in this case where Victoria voters were asked to say ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ to a proposed borrowing of $49,200,000, almost 3 out of every four citizens squandered their franchise.

The whole intent of this absenteeism or boycotting behaviour is thus impossible to discern with any scientific rigour, leaving the dubious claim of victory by the YES side in serious doubt.

COMMON FACTOR IN BOYCOTTERS’ AND NAYSAYERS’ MAJORITY COHORT: THEY DID NOT ENDORSE THE MAYOR’S PLAN

However, neither can the NO side completely claim all of these boycotters, although they do share one commonality with the boycotters, and that is that neither the boycotters’ nor the naysayers’ cohorts endorsed the YES side of the Fortin Council, thus making them the most signficant conglomerated cohort of all for analysis.

PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION NEEDED TO STOP VICTORIA PRECEDENT

FROM INFECTING OTHER CIVIC GOVERNMENTS FROM ATTACKING DEFENCELESS TAXPAYERS

Because of these and many other problems documented for the historical record at our CCC website, we urgently therefor implore that the Provincial Government intervene in the public interest of saving democracy in Victoria’s civic governance, to nullify the results of both the Victoria referendum and the concurrent byelection, mainly due to these cited insufficient numbers of registered voters participating in the first instance, one-sided campaign funding injustices, polling stations’ infractions and many other docmented abusive irregularities undertaken by the present City of Victoria Council, and most importantly, due to the completely insufficient raw polling data necessary to reach a sure, conclusive democratic majority in terms of the final vote counts, finally made available only today by the City of Victoria, a full four days after the closing of polls for these events.

URGENT NEED FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS TASK FORCE RECOMMENDATIONS TO BE IMPLEMENTED BEFORE 2011

We understand that the Provincial Government’s own Local Government Elections Task Force has produced 31 or more recommendations for reform of such campaigns and voting procedures in this province, and we implore responsible ministers concerned to call for the legislature to be reconvened in the public interest to pass emergency legislation to protect endangered democracy, not only in the capital city, but in the whole Province of British Columbia, by urgent implementation of these needed reforms, and to incorporatate any other needed reforms into the reformed Local Government Act, so as to impede any similar capricious Councils of any party or political orientation in this province from similar fiscally irresponsible attacks against defenceless citizens, voters and taxpayers as has happened in the Victoria Byelection-Referendum just past.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF CO-RELATION BETWEEN LOCAL GOVERNMENT ABUSE OF POWER,

LOW VOTER TURNOUT, WEAKENED DEMOCRACY, NON-ACCOUNTABILTY AND DISRESPECT FOR GOVERNMENT

A co-relation must be acknowledged between low voter turn-out, and the scandalous abusive, anti-democratic manipulation of byelections and referenda by stimulus-addicted Councils of all political parties, and we implore the ministers reading this urgent letter to acknowledge the problem and to try to address it with higher thresholds for passing such proposals.

A double major Majority of 71% of eligible voters participating, and a further 71% of that cohort indicating approval gives a clear minor majority of 50.04% of eligible voters endorsing any given plan, making it very difficult to accomplish, thus protecting overburdend taxpayers across the province.

We believe that these suggested reforms would encourage voter participation, enhance democracy in communities across the great province of British Columbia, discourage similar systemic abuse of process by manipulative Mayors and Councils of all parties, and would ultimately improve accountability also.

GOOD LOCAL GOVERNANCE IN PROVINCE’S TAXPAYERS’ PUBLIC INTEREST:

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM, ADVERTISING REFORM,

HIGH VOTER PARTICIPATION THRESHOLDS FOR REFERENDA, ETC.

All of these reforms would be in the immediate public interest of better governance in the Province of British Columbia, and we urge you to implement them with dispatch.

We hereby serve notice, with all due respect to the Premier, the Attorney General and the Minister responsible, that the undersigned Concerned Citizens hope and expect them to do their sworn duty to see that impartial justice is served, and that participatory representative democracy is saved in the Province of British Columbia at the Local Government level, and to therefor please act with dispatch to rectify these matters, in the public interest.

6 Responses to Concerned Citizens’ Coalition’s ‘Formal Citizens’ Complaint’ against City of Victoria. Urgent plea for Provincial Government Intervention to save democracy in British Columbia. Call for nullification of Victoria Byelection – Referendum, request for rescheduling of same to 2011, immediate implementation of 31+ Task Force-recommended reforms of Local Government Act regulations governing elections, byelections, referenda, etc. Open Letter to Premier Gordon Campbell, Attorney General Michael de Jong, Minister Stephanie Cadieux from David Burke and Gregory Hartnell, former Concerned Citizens’ Coalition Councillor Candidates